100 Things I Love About Korea - #22: People: Wayne Arrellano

   How do you share what God is doing your life in just one page? It's quite hard. So rather than sharing what is happening now, I'd rather share the lesson I am continually learning.

   Unlike many of my friends and colleagues, I didn't grow up in the church, and although I had two parents, only one was biological but both were real. I knew nothing of God and in many ways I didn't know much about happiness. I'm half Filipino and half American. I lived in the Philippines until I was 7, at which point I moved to California and learned how to speak English. I mention this only to say that I never really felt accepted anywhere and so I never felt at peace. 

   I  eventually grew up to be a California Kid but it wasn't until I moved to the hills of West Virginia, when a very cute girl in my class asked me to go to her youth group did I ever step foot inside a church willingly.  From that moment on, life changed. I was sixteen years old.

   Among many things, what changed in me was this. (Cheesy, I know) I felt like I found a home in God's heart and in mine there was peace. This peace has become my most closest companion. 

   I had peace when I started living alone and had to pay rent when I was only a sophomore in high school. I didn't know enough about doubting God to be afraid or to be worried. God's peace was ever present in my life.
   When it was time to choose which university to attend...the inexpensive state schools or the very expensive private Christian schools and then finding a way to pay the costs, I had peace.
   When time came to decide what kind of future I wanted. And when the time came to decide if I wanted to answer a call from God to work with the youth in some form. I knew my answer when my heart felt that certain yet mysterious peace that can only be explained as God's. I like to say when I can sleep at night about a decision I've just made, then I know that is the right decision for me.
   And when time came to decide to come to Korea, and then remain in Korea, that's right. The same peace was there. (Actually, a funny story about that...as I was praying about what is up next, Pastor Josh asked to meet with me and so we went to the gym together to work out. During the workout, we made small talk but mainly we just focused on lifting weights and running on the treadmill. Afterwards, in the community shower, he shared the the reasons why I should stay in Korea. It was then I felt the peace I was so certain of...strangest place to find.
   Everyday I wake up knowing that I am right where I need to be. Despite the current circumstances surrounding my work, I know that KNU is where I belong right now. How do I know. In my heart, there is peace and a certainty that God is with me.
   And that my home and acceptance belong in God's heart and among God's people.  So, let me leave you with the Scripture I live by.  Philippians 4:6-7:

6 Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done. 7 Then you will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus.

And Luke 12:25:

Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life (and there is a footnote that reads "or an inch to his height"). If I could do that, I would be a giant. 

God bless.
Thanks +Wynn Arellano!

100 Things I Love About Korea - #20 - People: Shannon Smith

This month our church members are sharing testimonies during the worship service.  This is Shannon's testimony from two weeks ago.

Anyone who knows me well will know that I am not a person who likes change. I came to Korea 4 1/2 years ago with the intention to stay here one year and go back to the U.S. I didn't want to come to Korea, but after living here a few months, I made many friends, learned to love Korean food, as well as love Korea's people and culture. As I said though, I hate change and I have experienced a lot of change while living here. Since moving to Korea, I have worked at 5 different schools, lived in 5 different apartments, and said goodbye to so many friends. It hasn't been easy for me. Part of the reason is because when I care about people, I care about them deeply, so it’s hard for me to let them go. It’s good because it means I genuinely love others, but it’s bad because it means I am often easily hurt. 

For most of my life, my self-worth and acceptance have come from what other people think about me. I am a people-pleaser. I often feel like I can't say "no" to people, because I worry about whether they will still love me or care about me. And even though I have been a Christian for almost 20 years, my relationship with God was the same. I never felt good enough or worthy enough for God to love me. No matter how many times I asked God to forgive me, I never felt like I was really forgiven. I believed God could heal and forgive everyone, except me. I walked around with so much guilt, shame, brokenness, and negativity. I felt so lonely, even though I was rarely alone. 

Most people didn't know this though, because I was too afraid to share it with others. I cried almost every day for months and it was even hard for me to pray. I just felt so heavy and burdened by all of it. I wanted to fix it, but there was nothing I could do. Throughout this whole time of struggle, I was so focused on what "I" should do, that I never really surrendered it all to God. I was never really honest with God about all of my angry and hurt feelings. Just like my fear of telling people about my struggles, I was even afraid to tell God. It wasn't until I simply said, "God, I need you. I need you. I need you", over and over through my tears that I began to really experience God's love and grace in my life. There never would have been anything I could have done to heal my brokenness and pain. I needed God to heal me. I needed God to reassure me that no matter what my past looks like, He still loves me and forgives it all. I needed God to give me peace where there was so much despair. And I needed God to give me hope that no matter what my future holds, He is with me and will never leave me alone. 

100 Things I Love About Korea - #19: People: Dianna Kriegh

This month our church members are sharing testimonies during the worship service.  This is Dianna's testimony from last week.

I came to Korea with a specific plan. I was going to stay one year, improve my Korean language skills while teaching, and then leave for a graduate degree in East Asian history. Soon after the 12-month mark arrived for me, I was telling people that I felt like God was laughing at me—good-naturedly of course—because everything I had said about where my life was going to be that fall was wrong. By that time I was living in Cheonan and teaching at the school where I still am today.

I knew before I ever arrived that God’s hand was guiding me in this and that he had plans beyond my own, and yet I’ve still found it extremely difficult to surrender my future to his keeping. Every fall I have once again pulled out my old grad school applications, reconsidered my goals, and begun the arduous mountain of paperwork necessary for entrance into highly competitive programs and the scholarships that would make them possible. Yet, every spring I have found that it’s not time to leave and as you can see I’m most definitely still here.

This fall the application process seemed more important than it ever has before. The Fulbright program, which brought me here to teach, is technically a graduate fellowship and a multi-national government grant, and it allows participants a maximum of three years in the program. At the same time that I was sure I had no choice but to leave I felt God calling me to become more involved and to invest more of myself in my students and my life here. As I was spending spare moments in the teachers’ office trying to write personal statements and essays for scholarships, I was also becoming involved with the students’ lunch-time bible study, being asked for advice and guidance, and connecting with parents who only see their sons on rare school holidays.

In the middle of all this I began to get angry with God. I felt like he was telling me to stay when both he and I knew that was impossible—even if I could stay in Korea with another teaching program I couldn’t stay at my school because it is and has been a Fulbright school for many years. As a result of this stress, by the middle of September my normal struggle with hormonal insomnia had turned into a continuous cycle of so little sleep that I watched my health deteriorate and everything in my life come to a standstill; nothing was getting done. 

On the last Thursday in September I had a meeting with Josh. I desperately needed an outside perspective on my problems, and I got it. I walked away from that meeting with advice that I was determined not to follow—the suggestion to just talk to my school about staying without Fulbright and see what they said. I of course knew that Josh had no idea how impossible his suggestion really was because it was Fulbright and not my school that would stop something like that from happening.

Less than 24 hours later a completely disconnected conversation with our school’s head English teacher led to a request that I stay past my Fulbright contract. By the following Monday, I was officially asked to sign a contract for three more years at my school pending Fulbright’s approval and promise that at the end of that time our school could return to the program. Throughout October things with my school continued to progress as we considered appropriate ways to approach Fulbright with our request and began filling out paperwork and tracking down documents for the change of my visa status that would necessarily come with the change in my contract.

I continued to have so many doubts and to worry about what would happen, but finally on the day after Thanksgiving I had a meeting with the director of Fulbright Korea. In the hour long conversation I had with her she not only agreed to allow my school to temporarily leave the program with the promise that they could return when I leave, but also she offered to help me obtain the Korean government scholarship for graduate school in Korea three years from now. Objectively speaking, there are still many things that could happen between now and July that could cause all of these plans to fall through, but I have faith that as God started this he will also complete it. I think I have finally reached the point where I can stop making my own plans, because I’ve learned to really trust that God’s are better.

Smoking Miracle (24-7 Prayer)

From a member of KNU International English Church (in Cheonan, South Korea) who prefers to remain anonymous.

This is a smoking story, but not the kind one reads about or sees on TV.  This is about a real miracle.

Back in March, my boss told me that all foreign teachers had to get some tests done at the medical center.  My boss told me that he needed to take me to get tested March 27th.   I scheduled my time at our church's 24/7 Prayer Room for March 30th.  Then, my boss told me he only had time to take me to the medical center on March 30th (right when I was scheduled for the prayer room). I was very angry and hurt about this, but rescheduled the prayer room for Sunday.

When I came for the tests, I found out there would be a chest x-ray also.  I always get nervous about chest x-rays, but this time was extreme.  I was so nervous that I failed the blood pressure test.  

I decided to smoke before going into work and quit for 24 hours in order to really help the blood pressure results on the following day.  I figured that after the test, I would be free to smoke all I want.

I passed the blood pressure test and the chest x-ray, but something very strange happened: I suddenly lost the desire to smoke.  I also had a cold and a bad cough, which I wasn't even taking medication for.  All of this went away the same afternoon.

Then on that Saturday, I went swimming and found myself swimming very fast without even trying. My lung capacity had improved so much that I just naturally swam faster.

I have been smoking heavily since 1980!  I did not plan to quit smoking last month.  It just happened.  I feel that God worked a miracle in me. I am even more grateful to God for helping me quit and for healing my body.   All of this means even more to me, because it all happened during Holy Week before Easter and our 24/7 Prayer Week.  I have now been free of smoking for almost two months!

Arise and Shine - Engage Magazine Article

-- This article originally appeared at: www.engagemagazine.com.   --

 Baptism speaks of a new life, and on September 4 we witnessed this glorious sacrament in abundance as nine people rose up from the waters at KNU International English Church (at Korea Nazarene University). In golden letters on a wall overlooking the plaza, 'Arise, shine' (Isaiah 60:1) formed a fitting backdrop for Christians arising from the water aglow with sunlight.

The baptism testimonies were as different as you would expect in a group hailing from four countries and spread over three generations.

Undoubtedly, one of the most uplifting stories shared was from Mrs. Lee, a mother of two teenage sons who were also baptized. As one of her sons translated, she spoke of her life without God for 27 years and how she had slowly started experiencing the Lord in her life again. Even though she doesn't speak English well, with help from the pastors and the Holy Spirit, she has overcome the language barrier. One night she dreamed she met God in a room with a white wall and high ceiling. Later in the week she joined her sons in the church's 24/7 prayer room, and she was shocked to see the same room where she had met the Lord in her dream. She immediately broke down in tears, and soon after she gave her life to Christ.

Story of Change - Mark Groleau

Sometimes, a little time and a few good conversations make a big difference in someone's life.  Here is the story of my friend Mark, who found his way back to Christ while in Korea, and just graduated from seminary.

It was the spring of 2006. I was living in Korea, teaching English as a Second Language. Recently, I had registered for a Teachers’ Diploma Program at a university in Brisbane, Australia; it was slated to begin in the fall of the same year. My wife, Naomi, had applied to the same school for an MBA program. Our five-year plan was set. She would go into business, and I would fulfill my dreams of becoming a high school teacher at a public school in Canada. But our plan was about to change.
I grew up in a suburb of Ottawa, my family’s house backing onto a pasture where horses grazed and strawberries grew wild in summer. Even on the hottest of days, I couldn’t wear shorts; even when my sister rode her bike with me on the dirt track near our house or we went swimming, she wasn’t allowed to wear pants. These were just two of the “standards” on which salvation depended. They were not rules set by my parents, but by our pastor. They were the rules I grew up with, because one Sunday morning just before my third birthday, my father had taken me along to check out a tiny new church that had started up near our house. His decision to become a member would shape the rest of my life.
By the age of twenty, I had graduated from the one-room-schoolhouse-style church school that each child of the church was mandated to attend, and I was an undergrad student in the University of Ottawa’s English Literature program. Weekdays were spent reading Chaucer, Shakespeare, and literary criticism in the library; weekends were spent preaching and leading music in the sanctuary. As my time between school and church became increasingly divided, so did my mind. I began to question the legalism and the doctrine that had become my way of life; when I asked the pastor and other leaders for answers that might justify some of the more dogmatic claims, I found that there were none. One fateful Sunday morning, much like the one that  had  determined the trajectory of my life eighteen years earlier, I met my father at the door in my pajamas. I told my family I would no longer be attending church.
Four years later would find me graduated from university, teaching in Korea, and attacking Christianity on every level I could conjure up. But there was a Canadian girl. And an American pastor. Both Christians who would not let me go ...


To keep reading Mark's story, click here.

You can check out some of his sermons at: http://markgroleau.com/.